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What is Lead Nurturing and Why Do Marketers Need It? | iContact

What is Lead Nurturing and Why Do Marketers Need It? | iContact

If you never talk to your marketing leads after obtaining them, they'll wilt from lack of attention. The prospective customers will go elsewhere for what they need. If you bombard them with too much information, they'll leave just to escape.

We've all heard the old business adage: People buy from people they like (and trust). Lead nurturing is all about building that trust and getting people to like you. That means you need to give them things they find valuable, and give them the right amount.

For example, a landscaping company specializing in large residential projects has found an effective way to generate enough leads through their website. But they've also learned the hard way that people don't like being called once a month to see if they're ready to buy.

Publish and email four seasonal "special reports" on plant and lawn care for each season;

Host a discussion forum where members can ask questions of each other and share information;

Host a blog where they answer customer questions and respond to appropriate news stories;

Publish a monthly e-newsletter that re-shares the same previous information.

Notice, none of their content includes "talk about ourselves or special promotions." That's because effective content marketing is all about building relationships and trust. Have you ever had a successful date where the other person talked about himself or herself constantly?

The same is true for our landscaper's content marketing campaign: it's all about the other person. But it's done at such a pace that the customer isn't feeling pressured or crowded. He or she begins to trust the landscaper, learns how much they know, and sees them as a credible expert. And when they're ready to make a big purchase, there's only one person they're going to call.

Why Do Marketers Need Lead Nurturing?

Consider the old-school sales model: you meet someone at a trade show, give them a demo, and get their contact information. If you're good at trade shows, you follow up with that person next week.

If you're bad at trade shows, the lead sheet sits in the bottom of the display case until you see it at your next trade show six months later.

But not you. You immediately put the lead into your database, and called the next week to see if they had any questions. You even scheduled an office visit with them.

According to a 2010 Gleanster report, anywhere from 30 – 50% of all leads aren't ready to buy when they join your sales funnel, and neither was this person — they had to "think about it." So you called a month later. They still weren't ready. Another month, and they still weren't ready. And so on, until you quit calling. By the time they were ready to order, you had stopped calling (after 10 "think about its," you can take a hint!), and the opportunity was lost forever.

With lead nurturing, you don't have to make call after fruitless call. Instead, you can use your marketing automation system to qualify your leads. (According to an Annuitas Group study, businesses that use marketing automation for lead nurturing see a 451% increase in qualified leads.)

You set up a marketing automation campaign that sends the appropriate content to your prospects on a regular schedule. You can send a regular newsletter, where everyone gets the same content at the same time. You can use a progressive campaign, where everyone gets a piece of content that builds on the previous one, based on when they were added to the system. You can even create on-demand content, so people can request it based on where they are in the sales funnel.

Best of all, you can use lead scoring — assigning weights and scores to your prospects' activities — to determine exactly when your potential customers are ready to talk to you.

With the old sales model, you called and called, but didn't add anything of value. You spent hours every day, playing dialing for dollars, just hoping your call coincided with their buying window.

With lead nurturing, you create the content once, and put it in the marketing automation system. The content is delivered to your prospects and they read it at their convenience. You don't have to match the buying window, the system is already taking care of that. You can keep your presence top of mind for your customers without actually pestering them.

And if you're bad at trade show follow-up, just enter the new contacts into the system while you're at the show, and then you're all set. The marketing automation system will take care of the rest.